The Heart of the Matter
by blueEyes206
Summary: "The heart fascinates him. Not only does it pump blood to the rest of the body, keeping every human being alive, it's the seat of emotions." A story about Doctor Motorcycle Boy and the one heart he couldn't heal.


**Author's note: Everyone pretty much hates Doctor Motorcycle Boy. Yes, he is a shipper irritant, but I refuse to believe that he's a bad guy or a rotten boyfriend. I decided to explore the possibility that he really, truly loves Kate Beckett. **

**There are VERY slight spoilers in here for the Season Four premiere, "Rise," but if you haven't seen the sneak peek, it'll just seem like my own speculation.**

**Also, this is in NO WAY a Kate/Josh fic. It's simply written through the eyes of Josh, in an attempt to better understand the character everyone seems to despise and make him believable and likable.**

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><p>Dr. Joshua Davidson loves his job as a cardiac surgeon.<p>

When his parents give him a little Fisher Price medical kit for his third birthday, he begins to diagnose his family with so many made-up diseases that his older brothers eventually throw him out of their room. He listens to his parents' hearts so many times a day that they take away his pretend stethoscope.

Somewhere between that third birthday and medical school, Josh decides that cardiology is his calling. The heart fascinates him. Not only does it pump blood to the rest of the body, keeping every human being alive, it's the seat of emotions. By the end of medical school, he knows what it's like to have his heart broken and finds himself making comparisons of physical and emotional heartbreak.

As he matures, Josh realizes that some days of being a cardiac surgeon aren't easy. Perhaps a patient isn't progressing as well as he hoped. Perhaps surgery isn't successful for a patient, and they have a fatal heart attack. Even after doing all he can, perhaps he loses a patient on the operating table. Some days are harder than others, but he accepts them all as part of his duty.

However, two days in his life are significantly harder than the rest.

The first – a sunny New York City day – is supposed to be a normal day of rounds. He has no surgeries scheduled and will spend the day doing routine examinations.

Everything changes when a call comes in about a 31-year-old female who has been shot in the chest. Josh grabs gloves and rushes to the operating room where his team is waiting for him. The patient is wheeled into the room and moved from a gurney to the operating table before he realizes who she is.

"Kate?"

Shock and fear run through his blood, and his own heart skips a beat. It's unethical for him to operate on her, he knows it, but when he discovers she's dying – the woman he loves is dying on his operating table – he has to act.

Eventually another surgeon replaces him, and he rushes into the waiting room to find out why his Kate is fighting for her life.

Of course Castle is there. Of course. Josh knows the blame really lies with the bastard who shot her, but he's scared to death by the memory of his girlfriend's blood spilling over his shoes, and the writer is an easy target.

He shoves him – hard – and is shocked, quite frankly, at how Kate's friends jump to Castle's defense. Josh calms down for the sake of her father, whom he can barely acknowledge, and walks off angry and slightly embarrassed that he physically fought someone. He also has the nagging sense that he doesn't belong in her world. Even after several months together, he still knows nothing about her compared to her precinct family.

During Kate's recovery, he visits her often. Castle does, too. This fact doesn't go unnoticed to Josh, but he knows that her heart is slipping away from him. In fact, it may never have been his in the first place. He loves her and would've given her his heart completely, but her heart has always belonged to another. He realizes that he can't be mad at Castle, and even though he should be mad at Kate, he isn't. She has a beautiful, damaged heart, and for once, he's not the one that can fix it.

The day before Kate is released from the hospital, Josh visits her for the last time. She quietly ends things between them, and he can't resist one last kiss to her forehead.

"Take care of yourself, Kate," he whispers as he leaves.

Years go by, and Josh tries to fix his own broken heart. He remembers his calling and goes on many more Doctors Without Borders trips, helping the less fortunate and healing his heart in the process. Pieces of his heart still belong to Kate, but the pain isn't as noticeable anymore.

The second hardest day of Josh's career comes when he is called to perform emergency surgery on a 66-year-old man who has suffered a massive heart attack. He feels a sense of déjà vu when he sees the man on his operating table.

Kate's father.

He's only met the man once, and that was when Kate was dying, so he's not sure what the ethical guidelines are here. But he's also the only surgeon available and has to complete the operation without a replacement.

The surgery isn't easy. Jim Beckett faces almost as much damage to his heart as his daughter did a few years earlier. A bad reaction to the anesthesia puts him into a coma for a day, and as a result, Kate and her family spend days sleeping in chairs and a cot on the floor in the corner of the private room.

Josh handles his first encounter with Kate pretty well, all things considered. His palms sweat more than he'd like, and his heart is racing. Apparently he hadn't flushed her from his bloodstream as well as he'd thought.

It isn't until a few days later, though, when he comes to check on Jim Beckett in the middle of the night, that Josh's heart takes the hardest blow.

He's about to enter the room but hears quiet voices and stands outside for a few minutes longer. He shouldn't be listening, he knows it, but he can't help but observe the life of the woman who still holds part of his heart.

Kate stands up from the cot and stretches, tucking the blankets back around the sleeping three-year-old girl who hasn't yet noticed her mother's absence. She shuffles her feet toward the bathroom and bumps into the chair that holds her sleeping husband and four-year-old son. The little boy stirs.

"Mommy?" Sleep clouds his voice.

"Shh. Go back to sleep, Ben."

"But I hafta go potty."

"Okay, sweetheart, go ahead."

The little boy slides off his father's lap, and Josh watches as Kate takes her son's spot in Castle's lap. It's hard for him to watch, but he can't tear himself away.

Castle blinks sleep from his eyes and wraps his arms around Kate.

"Hey, you okay?"

She hesitates.

"No. I know he's out of the coma, but I'm still terrified. What if—"

"Don't do that, Kate. He's a fighter. He'll recover, just like you did."

Josh watches as Castle slowly traces a finger down her chest where he knows Kate's surgery scar is. Kate bites her lip and looks away, but Castle hooks his thumb under her chin and makes her face him. Josh feels his heart aching in his chest; he should look away from this intimate moment, but the masochist in him won't allow it.

"He's strong, Kate. Stronger than you think. There's no way he's going to give up when he has two beautiful grandchildren to spoil."

She smiles and rests her forehead against his.

"I love you."

Josh steps further away from the door and leans his head back against the wall. Those words sound beautiful falling from her lips, and at one point, he would've given anything to hear them directed to him.

But the scene he's just witnessed and the family he sees before him is perfect. They're the perfect picture of love.

For the first time since Kate ended things between them, Josh's heart feels whole. The irony of this is not lost on him. The woman who has held part of his heart for the past six years just confessed her love to another man. Maybe part of it is that he finally sees the love between the writer and the detective. He now has evidence that Castle can heal the one heart he couldn't.

Whatever the reasons are, Josh reclaims the final pieces of his heart from Kate Beckett that day and remembers that his heart truly belongs to his work. One day, he might find someone who understands his calling, just as Castle understands Kate's, but until then, he knows he'll keep pouring his heart into helping others.


End file.
